Jun 07, 2012: We were lucky to see a wide range of different landscapes of the wetland. There are mineral islands in the bog — these are locations were solid rock is elevated and thus these places are not so wet, and usual plants grow there. Long ago the islands of this bog were inhabited by people. They lived from crop farming, and that was quite good farming, as neighborhood of wetlands had some advantages (I'm going to write about that in the next post). In those times all forests on the islands were exterminated.

About 100 years ago people left these places. Now the scientists of the reserve have a rare opportunity — to monitor and describe how forests return to the lands. Nowadays we didn't see even a smallest trace of houses or some other artifacts except this grave. Besides, it was reported that a couple of years ago someone saw a last wild iron bed walking somewhere on this island.

Mikhail Yablokov, Dima Antonov